Too busy to blog.

IT seems along time since I sat down to fizzy hammer. Three reasons, been busy, been busy  campaigning , having wonderful outings with family and friends, suffering with a knee that is going to be replaced sometime soon. The campaigning has taken me to Cambridge, London and Durham, the outings to LLandudno, on a trawl of local museums with Steve and Lisa Daisy and Matt. I love the way museums are so child friendly and so hands on. They made full use of all the dressing up clothes available and we had Saxon kings and slave girls, a lot of different animals and little Victorian girls. I now have two grandchildren who I see upside down more than I see them the right way up.

I seem to be doing a lot of work around Dementia Friendly extra care housing which is the kind of place P and I live in. It is so satisfying to see how quickly they take on board the observations I make and disseminate them. One of the architects contacted me to say that in future she would always include storage cupboards for incontinence pads in the future. and when I had said how disconcerting it was at Christmas both for those Dementia and the frail elderly when corridor hand rails were decorated with wrap around garlands an email went out to the court managers the next day. Housing 21 really does care about being Dementia Friendly.

In Cambridge there was an exhibition of the latest OT aids for the disabled which was fascinating. I used to have a dream of owning a Morgan, now I have a dream about a toilet that washes and dries your bottom, finishing with a spray of something pleasant.

Jane, took me to Llandudno for the day, just for fun and to see the sea.We were like a couple of kids; riding on the little train, eating ice cream on the pier, tucking into an afternoon tea big enough for six.

Jane decreed as we parked that we we were not going to talk about politics any more (We had talked about Trump from Madeley to North Wales), instead we were going to talk about clothes, books, sex, men  and families. Of course we still talked politics, but we shopped for clothes – Jane has a great theology which declares ‘ It would be a sin to leave it on the rails’ looked at books planned to go back for the opera and all the things friends do.

At my age talking about sex was going to be a bit of a retrospective but we discovered that you are never too old to fancy Idris Elba. Age is a strange thing. I am at least 30 years older than Jane but never feel it. we have been friends from the day we both were interviewed for jobs at Stoke College of F.E. and our friendship just deepens all the time. Our initial impressions of each other was she thought I was ‘ too posh’ I thought she was unfriendly. You never can tell

So far our plans include Glastonbury for Halloween and Christmas shopping at Clarke’s Village, Llandudno again to introduce Jane to her first opera, Amsterdam next spring if not this autumn.

People often ask me ‘ Does anything help when you have Dementia  Friendship certainly does.

On the subject of Dementia since we must,  it is slowly but surely drawing ahead. Last week I had a call from my G,P surgery about my shortly to happen knee replacement, I and no sooner put the phone down than i had forgotten what I had been told to do. So I had to ring back and ask and the lovely  staff member carefully explained again got me to  write it down and read it back to her.

Doors and what may or may not be on the other side become more of a problem and my problems with Christmas parcels is beginning to transfer to Amazon boxes which I find I treat with growing wariness.

Enough Books to listen to.gin to drink friends and family to celebrate, football to watch.